Buses connecting communities

The essential service provided by buses

Buses perform a crucial transport function. In cities, large vehicles provide mass movement with minimal use of road space at low cost to road users, and with a relatively low per passenger impact. In rural areas, they deliver a social lifeline to the many people without access to a car. However, to work effectively (and to be economically viable), buses need a critical mass of people to travel on them. Unfortunately, achieving such volumes has proved progressively more challenging. Indeed, bus use in Great Britain has been in decline for more than 70 years – from 93 billion passenger kilometres in 1953 to 29 billion passenger kilometres in 2023, a fall of almost 70% (DfT, 2024).

The reasons for this decline in bus travel have been well documented for decades yet continue to be unaddressed. Moreover, particularly dramatic cuts to service provision of 52% in rural areas have occurred since 2008 as a direct result of austerity policies (FoE, 2023).

Research at Loughborough University

The Transport and Urban Planning Group has researched rural transport policy since the 1980s through numerous projects funded by research councils, national and local governments, and via PhD studentships. In summary, these have explored how the factors behind declining bus usage are interconnected. Rising incomes lead to increased car ownership and use. This translates firstly into more investment in road provision and more dispersed development patterns, which are much more difficult to serve effectively by bus. This also leads to increased congestion which means that bus services become less reliable and more costly. These factors lead to more journeys being made by cars and less by buses, which leaves bus operators with the choice to either to raise bus fares to maintain revenues, and/or to reduce service levels to cut costs.

Recommendations

Consequently, focusing on improvements to buses (and indeed the transport system) alone to enable access to/from/within rural communities is bound to fail. Instead, a holistic approach is required, that considers the needs of communities more broadly.

For the short term, we propose that the Department for Transport adopt an incremental approach as follows:

1. Identify a series of ‘pilot communities’ for different rural contexts.
2. Identify current extant employment, retail, leisure, education, health and social care facilities, and all potential transport providers – e.g. bus, taxi/minicab, Community Transport, SEN transport, Patient Transport Services, Social Care and Education Transport, Voluntary Car Services, postal/parcel delivery services, local authority/utility/commercial vans, private car/van owners in those communities.
3. Identify specific gaps in service provision for required need.
4. Work with public, private and voluntary sector stakeholders (e.g. bus companies, taxi drivers, employers, local authority departments, CT organisations), to expand the ‘reach’ of what is in place and to design the most appropriate services where necessary.
5. Roll out the approach detailed above to rural communities.

Longer term, specific actions are required as follows:

1. Proactive development of physical services for rural communities – e.g. provision of community spaces, as well as visiting health care, library, retail options.
2. More joined-up delivery of goods, services, and transport offerings to people in rural areas.
3. Reversal of car-focused priority, towards active and public transport oriented solutions, e.g. creation of a comprehensive national interurban foot/cycleway network.
4. Fundamental review of regulatory frameworks across the transport sector.
5. 5. Establishment of stable financing arrangements for transport and broader community service provision in rural areas.
6. Adoption of a toolbox-led approach towards improving rural transport connectivity nationally.

References

Department for Transport (2024) Modal Comparisons (TSGB01), Statistical dataset, Transport Statistics Great Britain, DfT, London, 19 December.

Friends of the Earth (2023) How Britain’s bus services have dramatically declined, Friends of the Earth, London, November.

About the authors

Marcus Enoch is a professor of transport strategy and head of the Transport and Urban Planning Group in the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University. He has studied the bus and broader transport sector for more than 30 years, in particular from a policy perspective. His specific experience of relevance to this inquiry include leading studies for the Department for Transport (Enoch et al, 2004), New Zealand Ministry of Transport (NZMOT, 2018) and Wiltshire County Council (Enoch et al, 2006) on addressing the issue of providing and enhancing access to dispersed communities.

David Dawkins MCIHT is a PhD student at Loughborough University studying not for profit business models in road-based passenger transport. He has worked in land use planning and transport planning since 1992. He has long-standing experience of the rural transport context in particular.

Andrew Timmis is a senior lecturer in transport and planning at Loughborough University. The focus of his research is on policy evaluation in transport. Dr Timmis has worked on several projects with the Department for Transport and Transport for London and various local authorities.

Vivien Chow is a senior lecturer in construction and project management at Loughborough University. She has over 15 years’ industry experience working on architecture, urban planning, and property development projects.

This is one of a number of policy briefings from Loughborough University’s Policy Unit, created in collaboration with researchers at the University. The Policy Unit helps researchers at the University, who can offer high-quality research evidence, connect with policymakers to inform the policymaking process and benefit society as a whole.